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Their first excursion was right round the hill, down in the trench, and here there was plenty to have taken their attention for a day: there was an ant-hill, swarming with those great black ants found in the woods, whose hill looks one lightly shovelled-up collection of earth: then, close at hand, they heard the regular "tip-tap" of the great green woodpecker; the harsh "pee-pee-peen" of the wryneck; while, from far off, floating upon the soft breeze, came the sweet bell-tones of the cuckoo.
The wryneck and the woodpecker may be mentioned; and a still better instance is afforded by the small, gem-like kingfisher the only British bird which can properly be described as gem-like.
Among the regular visitors are included the white wagtail, the pied flycatcher, the nightjar, the black redstart, the lesser redpole, the snow bunting, the redwing, the reed, marsh, and grasshopper warblers, the siskin, the dotterel, the sanderling, the wryneck, the hobby, the merlin, the bittern, and the shoveller.
He, however, treated her as the harbinger bird, wryneck of the nightingale, sure that Aminta would keep her appointment unless an accident delayed. He had forgotten her name, but not her favourite pursuit of botany; and upon that he discoursed, and he was interested, not quite independently of the sentiment of her being there as a guarantee of Aminta's return.
Just as the countryfolk regard the wryneck as leader of the wandering cuckoos, and the short-eared owl as forerunner of the woodcocks, so the ancients held that the landrail performed the same service of pioneer to the quail on its long journeys over land and sea.
Just as the small horned owl, which reaches our shores a little in advance of the latter, is popularly known as the "woodcock owl," so also the wryneck, which comes to us about the same time as the first of the cuckoos, goes by the name of "cuckoo-leader." It is never a very conspicuous bird, and appears to be rarer nowadays than formerly.
On the walls were hangings with occult figures; the pillars were painted with weird and grewsome pictures; crucibles and cauldrons of various sizes were simmering over braziers on little altars; on the shelves and tables stood cups, phials, and vases, a wheel on which a wryneck hopped up and down, wax images of men and women some with needles through their hearts, a cage full of bats, and glass jars containing spiders, frogs, leeches, beetles, scorpions, centipedes and other foul creatures; and lengthways down the room was stretched a short rope walk, used in a Thracian form of magic.
I had a talk with my old friend of the wryneck on the subject, and told him that I had seen one of the bird-scarers going home to his cottage very early in the morning, carrying a bunch of about a dozen blackbirds and thrushes he had just shot.
If we have a bad temper, a penchant for whiskey, or a wryneck, heredity has the brunt to bear. We can always give our imperfections a little veneering by saying that they were an inheritance. Granting the significance of heredity as a factor in causing suffering, I wish to emphasize the fact that we can inherit only tendencies, or the raw material, as it were.
There were at Turin several new converts of my own stamp, whom I neither liked nor wish to see; but I had met with some Genevese who were not of this description, and among others a M. Mussard, nicknamed Wryneck, a miniature painter, and a distant relation.
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